Remember when I told you that I don’t like answering the door if I am not expecting someone? Well, this is why. I’m sitting in the purple chair, reading a rather dark and twisted mystery, when someone starts banging on my front door. Not just knocking, but banging. Then they ring my door bell three times, wait a beat, and start knocking repeatedly. I’m thinking, this has to be a neighbor and it has to be an emergency, what with the knocking and the banging and the repeated doorbell ringing. So I open there door and there is a woman standing there, she hands me a business card. On the business card it says “I am deaf.” It goes on to say something about looking for work, not having any work, oh did I mention I am deaf… this part was hard to read because the card had been copied from a copy many times over. Then at the bottom it says “Donate as much as you wish.” In her hands, she held a pile of bills. Not a lot, but enough to let me know that other kind souls had, apparently, given her money.

I was speechless. Which hardly mattered in this situation. Now, I only know a couple of things in sign language:

“Surprise!”

“Dead Dog”

“Shut up, bitch, go make me a turkey pot pie.”

None of these seemed appropriate. I did not know the sign for “What? Are you kidding me? You come to my home and bang on my door, ring my bell over and over, and I am supposed to give you money? You come to my door to beg for money?”

So I’m stuck. Do you go with compassion, or do you go with indignant annoyance? I went with annoyance. The sign for “oh no, no thank, no… shutting the door now!” is universal, kids. But it ticks me off, because some part of me wonders if I am supposed to feel guilty because I can hear and I have a job. While the other part of me is thinking that this is a total scam and the previously mentioned part of me is a sap. The sap side of me tells the cynical side of me to have a heart, and remember how very very fortunate we are. So the cynical side of me smacks the sappy side of me upside the head and tells her to quit being such a pussy. And then they get in a big fight and are currently not speaking to each other.

And that is why I don’t answer the door.

And yes, I really do know how to say “shut up, bitch, go make me a turkey pot pie” in sign language, although I find very little use for this knowledge.